Some Assembly Required is Mark’s response to the many Jazz artists he saw and heard on The Bakery stage; to the performances he documented here from August 2002 to January 2003. These “composites”, as the artist calls them, represent his latest creative work and perhaps a new direction for Jazz photography in general.
Joel H. Mark’s fine art production reflects his continuing interest in landscapes and architecture. He began using digital technology to alter and fuse multiple perspectives on natural and built environments. The resultant photographs achieved a more vital representation of Mark’s subjects. The works that comprise Some Assembly Required benefit from these earlier landscape and architectural experiments.
Photographing at The Jazz Bakery for the last six months, Mark used an automatic “point and shoot” camera, exposing many film frames while sometimes changing his perspective on the stage, musicians and audience. Later, the photographer scanned his negatives into a computer enabling him to digitally assemble “composite” images. Products of this effort, the Some Assembly Required photographs are virtual Jazz performance landscapes.
The evolution of Joel H. Mark’s imagery since 1981 from Audible Images to the recent “composite” landscapes of Some Assembly Required is a realization of Mark’s ambition to find a visual equivalence for the experience of Jazz.
Joseph De Mario
Curator
Bakery Art Exhibitions
Curator
Bakery Art Exhibitions
